Art
Agnes Denes's Future Imperfect
Spanning half a century, this retrospective reveals Denes's art to be so forward-looking that some of it remains ahead of its time even today.
Weekend
Art
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Painter of Modern Anxiety
Kirchner was the anti-Matisse.
Art
John Pai’s Complex, Abstract Drawings in Space
John Pai’s steel sculptures, nourished by a community of Korean artists in New York, reflect a sensibility outside the mainstream of American art.
Art
Required Reading
This week, the meme of the decade, historical accuracy and the 1619 Project, how not to discuss African fiction, considering the Black interior art, Chinese restaurants are closing in the US, and more.
Music
Big Thief's Haunting Musical Dreamworld
The Brooklyn folk-rock band’s two 2019 albums invent an imagined environment with its own internal logic, a densely wooded forest with strange, benevolent creatures lurking in the shadows.
Books
A Daily Commute Frames an Author's Reflections
Over the course of her graphic memoir, Commute, Erin Williams acknowledges the lives of people she encounters in her day, but she maintains a steady gaze on herself.
Art
Jessica Dismorr Is Getting Her Due, 80 Years Too Late
There is much to praise about Radical Women: Jessica Dismorr and her Contemporaries, and there is not a little to regret.
Art
The Endlessly Inventive Jörg Immendorff
Imagine Gustave Courbet’s materialism joined to Max Beckmann’s aggressive color, with a dash of Caspar David Friedrich’s visionary panoramas thrown in.
Art
The Unsparing Pages of Francis Bacon
Almost 30 years after his death, the unabated edginess of Bacon’s paintings, and the dark literary sources informing them, put the lie to our self-mythologizing.
Art
The Pursuit of Art, 2019
MoMA’s recognition of modernism’s multiverse, alongside artist-led drives for greater transparency on the part of museums and their boards, brought a twinge of optimism to the close of the year.
Books
This Be the Verse 2019
John Yau and Albert Mobilio select a few of their favorite poetry books from the past year.
Art
Required Reading
This week, Peter Schjeldahl is dying, a new Jordan Casteel mural, decolonizing a colonial museum, a guide to emoji punctuation, monoculture on the internet, Baby Yoda cookies and cocktails, and more.